Deflections: The difference between glory and the simple joy of coaching hockey

In last season’s blog, I frequently referred to my
bantam competitive team as a “gap” year squad I’d taken on to refresh my
coaching batteries.

Most of my last 15 years were with elite minor or
junior groups and I was getting a bit stale – even cynical. It was time to step
back a bit and look at the game differently.

It was a team that shouldn’t have been in a
competitive league at all. The association was just too small and the four-year
results were mostly disastrous.

This particular group, thin on talent to begin with,
had to play in a major bantam league of all second year boys. Though it was a
combined minor/major group, we went into games with half the team both outsized
and “out-skilled.” There was little hope for success.

I’d been informed of the low calibre and that the
previous year the team had been undisciplined with a whack of penalty minutes.
They were offensively challenged, defensively porous, and lacking confidence.

I suspect parents viewed my arrival with curiousity.
This might have been especially true when I said at the first parents meeting I
wasn’t afraid of parents; that they could complain any time they wanted so long
as they parked their emotions; that I took a development approach; that I
believed in and expected discipline from both kids AND parents, which meant no
moronic screaming at refs in games.

I’d love to tell you we were a Cinderella team and
pulled off a CFL Ottawa Redblacks zero to hero season. Sorry, none of that.

We finished dead last out of 13 teams. We had the
lowest goals for and one of the poorest goals against. We got to the semi-final
of one tournament (a first for this bunch). However, in the second half of the
season, earlier blowout losses became one-goal losses. We led all competitive
level teams in bantam and midget in fewest penalty minutes, averaging only 3.9
minutes per game. Their improvement was astonishing.

And it was the most fun I’d had coaching in years. They
were wonderful kids from terrific and supportive parents.

So recently, when a parent from that team came up to
me in a coffee shop, shook my hand and thanked me for the season - nine months
after it was done - I was taken aback.

He’d been on assignment for his job out of the country
and said he’d never had the chance to properly thank me for what I’d done with
the boys and his kid in particular. Another Dad recently emailed me joking I
“created a monster” in his son who is now turned on to conditioning and
improving his game. He told his father he missed my coaching.

Everyone wants to coach the top-level kids. Been
there, done that. It’s not the real hockey world though. Sometimes the purest
hockey is found elsewhere.

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